<p dir="ltr"><strong>Welcome to Arts University Plymouth, Benito. Can you please introduce yourself?</strong></p> <p dir="ltr">I am from Satipo in the centre of the Peruvian jungle. I grew up in the jungle, but I had to move to Lima, the capital city that is completely different from the jungle, because of terrorism when I was child. Even if today, we do not have the same social problems as the past, for most of the young people in the jungle, we do not have a lot of opportunities for local people.</p> <p dir="ltr">This is part of our challenge today, to bring these opportunities. A Fab Lab is a great way to do this, because it empowers people. It brings you technologies to make your ideas real, to collaborate or co-create with others. When you make your ideas real, you empower the local communities, because they say “I don't have to wait for others to come, to bring us a solution. We can create a solution. We can make the change that we are waiting for.” So this is extremely important.</p>

<p dir="ltr">Initially, I was invited and selected in a competition process to implement the <a href="https://www.fablabs.io/labs/fablablima">first Fab Lab in Peru</a> and South America in 2009. We started with the process in the <a href="https://portal.uni.edu.pe/">National University of Engineering in Lima</a>, and then we promoted the network, not only in Peru, but also in all of Latin America. Today, there are more than 300 Fab Labs in Latin America, with more than 50 Fab Labs in Peru. The most important Fab Labs for us in all of Latin America, not only in Peru, are the ones in the Amazon, because it's one of the biggest regions in terms of territory, but a region with less Fab Labs. So it's a huge challenge today. </p> <p dir="ltr"><strong>What can a Fab Lab in the Amazon do? What items can you make?</strong></p> <p dir="ltr">Well, with Fab Lab, people can make whatever they want, but the most important question is what's the purpose? This is an important point. When you ask what kind of things we can do in the Amazon, I mean, it's true that we can make everything, but what is relevant?</p> <p dir="ltr">So, when we start our workshops with young people, we invite them to propose what impact that they want to make in their communities. Most of the young people say, ‘Well I want to make something like a robot to recycle materials, or plastics in the rivers and to restore soil.’ <br /></p>

<p dir="ltr">Most suggestions are related to the environment, but I remember one of the most challenging product proposals was a bomb. </p> <p dir="ltr">In a context where young people are completely excluded from the national system, it's a place where they have no options after school. When faced with issues such as illegal mining, narcoterrorism and deforestation in this context of exclusion, we often can find this feeling of self destruction or desolation and hopelessness. </p> <p dir="ltr">When we started this workshop, and when we listened to the proposal to make a bomb with our colleagues, we said, okay, what do we have to do? Because we offer this possibility to make what they want to or do whatever they want. <br /></p>

<p dir="ltr">So we said, ‘Okay, we are going to learn. We are going to show them how to make a bomb, but first we will show them what the magic of new technologies and this collaborative process is. We invited them to explore their context using microscopes, using many different instruments that you can make in the lab, and then they rediscovered their own landscape. </p> <p dir="ltr">You want to make a bomb, yeah, but we have to co-create something where you have to interact with others, and you have to define collectively what we want to do as a group. So in this process of co-creation, the guy that wanted to make the bomb was changing the idea bit-by-bit, and finally, he made a bomb, but to generate energy. It’s a system that, with vibration, can generate these micro bolts, power and generate energy for many different purposes for the community. It was like a magic process for everybody. </p> <p dir="ltr">I think this is part of the power of the Fab Lab network. It's a network that brings you the capability to recover your hope, because you can connect your idea with the real world. You can connect with other people, ideas, and also you can see yourself as an agent of change in your community.<br /></p>

<p dir="ltr"><strong>What is the problem inside the Amazon? I read on your website that there is 20% deforestation and 30 to 91% malnutrition. Can you give a little bit more of an insight? </strong></p> <p dir="ltr">Well, some of the biggest problems in the Amazon are the extractive practices. I mean, it is a local economy based on cutting down the forest and changing the activities of the economy to agriculture or growing cities or farming. These are predative activities. It could work in another kind of context. For example, if we have agricultural areas where we have a low biodiversity, that is great, because we are increasing biodiversity locally. But if we go to the Amazon, where we have a huge biodiversity and then focus on agriculture, we are decreasing biodiversity. </p> <p dir="ltr">Maybe in the past, it was okay because it represented a small percentage of the forest. But today is not yesterday. These practices are increasing a lot of fires in the forest and changing the local ecosystems. So, I think this is one of the main problems that we have today; predation, contamination and in parallel, we don't have opportunities for young people in terms of education and in terms of capabilities development. If we add or if we take these two realities, we have a predative system.<br /></p>

<p dir="ltr">So how can we reverse that? First of all, I think it's about education in terms of empowering local people to reinvent the local economy, to protect the forest and to generate value with the forest, and this is part of what we are doing with Fab Lab. For example, with local communities, we are developing biosensors in order to measure the quality of the soil and also biomaterials to grow plants that are especially in risk of extinction, and to disseminate it. We are also using that to make, or to extract, the essential oils and apply it in the production of different applications for soap, shampoo, creams, etc. So they are learning, and we are learning together, about how we can create a new economy, regenerative for the ecosystem and regenerative for our health. </p> <p dir="ltr">Part of the problem is low levels of education. It's local people that are losing the sustainable practices, especially in nutrition. For example, they are eating industrialised foods rather than natural foods and it is creating a health crisis. I mean 90% of the young population have malnutrition even though they are in one of the most biodiverse places in the world, where we can find a lot of superfoods. </p> <p dir="ltr">I remember when we went to a native community, we showed them how to measure the acid level of the soil, the pH level. We used local products that they can use to test the acid level of anything and we used this to show them a plant. We said, ‘what happens if you put the plant in the water and the water is a neutral pH level of acid?’</p> <p dir="ltr">‘Yeah, it grows’, they say, ‘because it's their environment.’ And then we asked them to show us what happens if you put the plant in the Coca-Cola because they love sodas like Coca-Cola. They said ‘It will die.’ And so our second question was, why do you drink that? And they joked ‘clearly we want to die’, and realise now that they don’t understand the effect this kind of product is having on their bodies. <br /></p>

<p dir="ltr"><strong>What are some of the things in the Fab Lab that have been produced so far?</strong></p> <p dir="ltr">So far, we’ve made many things. I think one of the lines of production that we have a strong interest in are the printers of nutrients that are also connected with holistic curves. We are developing a smart mirror that can detect what you need. For example, in my case, I don't know, anti age [laughs], or maybe shampoo, or maybe some creams, and print it, customise it and bring it to you from just one single device. So you don't need a lot of packaging, you can create a lot of products in your bedroom, just with this one smart mirror. </p> <p dir="ltr">We are focused on how we can develop customised products for nutrition, for holistic care, and also on how to use chocolate for customised happiness. This is where we will be able to measure your stress, your cardiac rhythm and print the quantity of chocolate you will need to reduce stress levels. </p> <p dir="ltr">Other kinds of products are what local people want to apply in their own context, so a lot of sensors to measure the quality of water, quality of soil and the platforms to track it. This is part of what they want to introduce in this new economy. <br /></p>

<p dir="ltr">We developed a bioreactor where you can grow microorganisms to produce customised nutrients. And according to the environment, we can control the environment, pH level, temperature and you can stimulate it to produce, for example, more vitamin E or more vitamin C or others according to the proportion that you need. </p> <p dir="ltr">As well as this, we are exploring new materials or biomaterials, bioplastics and the applications in different fields, and also the regenerative materials, especially if you cut it or if you want to restore things. And finally, we are exploring how we create a structure that generates itself with microalgaes and biopolymers that you can create locally to regenerate the floating lab itself.<br /></p>

<p dir="ltr"><strong>And the reason why you will have the labs floating in the Amazon is so that the knowledge is distributed throughout the rainforest?</strong></p> <p dir="ltr">Yeah, this is an important question. In the Amazon, we have two kinds of Amazon, the highlands and the lowlands. The highlands are the forests in the mountains, and the rivers are not too big, but in the lowlands the rivers are too big,</p> <p dir="ltr">So people in this place, or in this part of the jungle, the level of the water, change a lot per station. For example, imagine that half of the year to come to the university, you can do it walking or by bike or by car, but the other half, you have to do it swimming or by boat. It's like an amphibious city because the river can rise. The level of the river can rise six metres, so it changes all of the landscape. These conditions make it almost impossible to have roads. We have roads in small parts, but to communicate from one city with other people, we still use the rivers. The rivers are the local medium of transport.<br /></p>

<p dir="ltr">Living in the water, it's part of the essence of the Amazon, and that's the reason why if we want to democratise the Fab Lab in the Amazon, the idea to have a fixed Fab Lab would not have a high impact in comparison with the idea of the floating network. With a floating network you can use it to go to the most distant communities and integrate because the river is not just a medium of transport, it's a medium of life. In the Amazon there are many different infrastructures such as hospitals, restaurants and hotels that are floating. Floating is part of the essence of the Amazon.</p> <p dir="ltr">It's a project to reverse or to change the predative model, where we take raw material, and export to the world through reinventive practices, to know where we take the knowledge, where we learn from ancestral practices and properties of nature and create a network of factories. That's the reason why it's important, because it's a way to disseminate this process and we learn from nature, export information and replicate it with local material. This is part of the basis of Fab City projects.</p> <p dir="ltr"><strong>Do you think that these fabrications are going to have a good outcome for the Amazon? Are they going to fix the problems?</strong></p> <p dir="ltr">We are living in a very critical moment today. We don't have an answer for the challenge that we are facing. It means that with climate change and a new economy, our expectation is to contribute to an answer. We have a reference for this new economy in the traditional uses or in the traditional habits in the Amazon, but we need to use this on another larger scale. So our expectation and aspiration is, how can we create this model, or contribute with a generation of this model that can reverse the biodiversity extinction and can align the growth of industrialisation of cities with the growing of the biodiversity in the world.<br /></p>

<p dir="ltr"><strong>How do you think that links in with Making Futures at Arts University Plymouth? </strong></p> <p dir="ltr">I am really happy to be here at Making Futures, because we are totally aligned with this vision. How from different perspectives, from the arts, from cities, from technologies, from methodologies and education, we generate this new world that we are not prepared for. </p> <p dir="ltr">We do not have all of the answers yet. So to be part of Making Futures, is an opportunity for us all to be making answers for these innovative futures together. And I love this idea, that it is not about fighting with a system. It's about generating a new model that makes the previous one obsolete</p> <p dir="ltr"><strong>Benito Juarez was a peer reviewer for Making Futures 2024 and acted as a Track Chair for the conference focus on 'Craft Techniques for Sustainable Alternatives to Extractive Practices'. Follow his plans for the Floating Fab Lab <a href="https://floatingfab.org/">here</a>.</strong></p> <p dir="ltr"><strong>Learn more about <a href="https://www.fablabplymouth.org/">Fab Lab Plymouth here</a> and follow more Making Futures coverage <a href="https://www.aup.ac.uk/posts">here.</a></strong><br /><br /></p>